


leaning into the same old story

by queen_edmund_pevensie



Series: Advent 2020 [5]
Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27759553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_edmund_pevensie/pseuds/queen_edmund_pevensie
Summary: klaus shows up at hope's school just to catch a glimpse.
Relationships: Hayley Marshall/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: Advent 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023931
Kudos: 24





	leaning into the same old story

**Author's Note:**

> from tumblr prompts: https://edmundsmercy.tumblr.com/post/629014997640642560/send-me-a-ship-and-one-of-these-and-ill-write-a#notes
> 
> #16 klayley -- things you said with no space between us

“Hayley, do you remember when you said that if I ever saw Hope’s father again, I was absolutely allowed to try and kill him, because of the dark magic that lived both inside Hope and Klaus, and if they were ever in the same place again it was cause an apocalypse and God knows Mystic Falls has had enough of those already,” Alaric says suddenly. Hayley sighs, turning to look at where Alaric is staring. She wanted, very simply, to drop Hope off at school for fifth grade and then go home. She certainly did not want to spend fifteen minutes talking about how last year Hope could have “been a little nicer to his girls” and to see – of all people – Klaus, skulking. But apparently, not her day. “Because he’s definitely here, but my crossbow is inside.”  
“I’ll deal with it,” Hayley grumbles. In some ways, she’s eager for the excuse to get out of this drop-off conversation about Hope’s social skills, but based on the way the trees are wilting around Klaus, she’s pretty sure anger is the more appropriate response.  
“You asshole,” she says, slamming a slightly bewildered Klaus against the nearest tree. She hasn’t spoken to him in months. Once, Rebekah got through to him. She reported that he was “very drunk” and not very talkative. Other than the rumors that he’s lost his mind, no one has heard anything from him since Hope’s birthday. And he has the audacity to show up here, at her school, and look bewildered. “You can’t be here.”  
He smiles sheepishly at her, glances back up at the school. There’s a tiny crack in his expression when he looks back at Hayley. “I needed to see her,” he says. “Just to make sure.”  
“Cool, it’s the twenty-first century. Try facetime.” She is angry. Klaus makes her so angry. When he’s not around, she can forget how frustrating he is. “Get out of here!”  
“Hayley,” he says, in that voice that she recognizes from a hundred phone calls, and hours of listening to him explaining himself. That voice – when he knows he’s wrong but he has to explain himself anyway.  
“It’s dangerous for both of you for you to be here and you know it,” she hisses. “I will drag you out of here if I have to.” It’s an empty threat. There is no universe in which Hayley could take Klaus on, but it’s the kind of thing Klaus listens to, usually with a smile. He’s smiling now, but there’s a muscle working in his jaw that belies how badly he wants to stay, just to catch another glimpse of Hope.  
Asshole. It’s not her fault he spoken to Hope once in the last year. That she’s left picking up the pieces, trying to explain why Klaus can’t talk to her, what the fuck is wrong with him that he isn’t able to explain how much he loves Hope.  
And even now, after two years of becoming the father he feared he would be, of four months of complete radio silence, stopping the scattered calls and letters to Hayley just to make sure that Hope is alive, there’s no doubt in Hayley’s mind that Klaus loves her. Loves her completely and selfishly the way he loves everyone else.  
If only Hope was less like Klaus, then maybe she would explain what exactly happened the last time she saw her father.  
Hayley groans and stomps past him back to her car, gratified at least that Klaus is following her. They’re almost far enough away – the grass stops turning brown underneath his feet once they’re in the center of Mystic Falls. Hayley stops at her car. Klaus is parked next to her, somehow, which makes the whole thing so much more frustrating, that he must have been tailing them for miles before he got close enough just to see Hope, but “he’s not the kind of man he wants his daughter to know.” It makes her angry enough to put her hand through her windshield, if she were more like Klaus. As it is, she squares her shoulder and rounds on Klaus, who is hovering, awkwardly in the town square of Mystic Falls, making absolutely no move to get in his car and get out. “You have no right to disappear on us and then stalk us,” she reminds him. He nods. “I catch you again, I’ll figure out how to kill you myself.” He nods again. Terrifyingly compliant. Not that she would kill him, even if it looks like Klaus would let her. She’s never seen him like this. Except –  
Except for right after she came back from her months’ long punishment in the bayou.  
It strikes her, the feeling he’s trying very, very hard to mask: loneliness.  
She hates him. It’s crazy how infuriating he is. Right now, he is doing everything in his power to not be the selfish prick he wants to be, and she feels bad for him, because in the last four years, she realizes, she’s built a life with the Crescents in New Orleans. She has a new boyfriend and family and Hope and Klaus has no one. He’s been on his own, for the first time in a thousand years.  
She sighs. She hates him. She loves him. “Look,” she decides. “I’m staying somewhere out of town on my way home, why don’t we take your car.”  
He looks a little surprised for a second, but mostly, he looks pleased and a little eager. He crosses over the passenger’s side and opens the door for her, and then gets in himself.  
***  
The thing about Klaus – well the thing about Klaus has always been that he’s never exactly who she thinks he is. Not just some psycho vampire, certainly not just some tortured artist. Even when she’s hated him with everything that she had, she had to admit that Klaus was on her side, that he always treated her like family, with every single thing that entailed. That he makes it impossible to like him – that he makes it equally as impossible to hate him.  
And also, she is drunk, and he is being suspiciously quiet, so it’s almost like a mirror of that night over ten years ago. A night that is a contradiction just like Klaus is. A night she can look at like a mistake, objectively. Stupid. Something neither of them would do again. A night she wouldn’t trade for the world. Her biggest mistake and her greatest gift.  
And also, Klaus is drunk too, which shouldn’t be especially surprising, although she doesn’t think he was all those years ago. She thinks that’s why he’s being quiet, watching her, leaning back in the generic hotel office chair while Hayley switches between channels, before finally turning the TV off and looking right at him. “What the fuck have you been doing?”  
He puts his drink down on the desk, and straightens up. There’s only so drunk two hybrids can get off the minibar, but they’re certainly trying their best. “None of your business,” he tells her, pointing. She hates it when he does that, when he points like it’s going to make what he says make more sense. None of her business. She has to laugh. “Seriously, Hayley, why did you invite me here?”  
“Why’d you come?”  
It’s just silence between them again. She could give him any number of reasons. Number one: ensuring that he didn’t sleep outside of The Salvatore School and get the local police called on him for stalking children or instigate Alaric into shooting him, because then her daughter would be out a headmaster. Number one-a: to make sure that there was enough distance between Klaus and Hope that he didn’t cause an apocalypse or kill Hope by his mere proximity, because he’s an unstable lunatic who followed them in spite of how he knows it’s dangerous.  
Number two: Because Hayley knows what it’s like to not be with Hope. Because she knows it has to be killing Klaus to never be able to hold their daughter again, that he’s missing every moment of her life, and he’s missing it because he loves her, because it is her life that he cherishes. Because he’s always been lonely, and now he is alone. If he gets too close to his family, the world will implode and Hope will die.  
The only one of his kind, hurting in a way that his family couldn’t possibly begin to understand.  
Only he isn’t the only one of his kind. And Hayley does understand. She’ll never forgive him for the three months she took from him, for the part he played in the eight months they lost together, but she’s looking at him now, the way he’s sitting in this stupid hotel room trying to get drunk, his hair just long enough to fall into his eyes, and she doesn’t hate him, and she knows it’s been so long since she’s hated him even a little bit. That if it was her, cut off from everything she loved in the world, cut off from Hope just so Hope could live, she would do it in a heartbeat, but it would kill her.  
She stands up and without thinking she grabs him to stand with her so she can tell him, so she can really tell him. “I know you miss her.” She squeezes his hands, both of them. Klaus looks at her. “But she misses you too. You have to –”  
“I can’t.” It’s as simple as that. He can’t. Fine.  
It’s the most frustrating thing about him. His terms. No explanation. She’s tired of it, but it’s not time to fight. She gets close to him, so she’s basically leaning against his chest, wraps her fingers around the back of his neck. “One day – one day, Klaus, you’ll have to. You can’t run forever.”  
They stand like that for too long. Any two, normal, sober people would break away, but they stand in a semi-embrace, moving only with the spin of the earth, Klaus’ arms pinned to his sides, and then, for the first time since the night Hayley knows was a mistake, but the night she would never, ever take back, Klaus kisses her.  
And of all things in this world, she kisses him back.  
***  
After, they lie there, staring at the ceiling, but this time there’s no rush to get anywhere. Her pack will still be in New Orleans, and she’s not worried about the consequences of sleeping with Klaus. Of all the things in her life - that felt normal. And he’s not eager to get anywhere. She’s pretty sure he has nowhere to go.  
She turns onto her side to look at him, to study the lines in his perplexingly young face. She was only twenty, she’s still only twenty in some ways, when they met and he’s so - he’s so Klaus - that it’s sometimes easy to forget how young they were when they were all turned. He doesn’t look that much older than she does. Maybe even younger. It’s impossible to tell, with vampires who get more than a couple of hundred years old.  
“What have you been doing?” she tries again, and Klaus sighs heavily like it’s the most inconvenient question in the world, which means something dastardly and Klaus-like. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye like he’s trying to decide.  
“It doesn’t matter,” he says softly, and then he pushes himself into a sitting position, swinging his legs off the bed. “I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.” Here to this hotel room with Hayley, or here to Mystic Falls because he couldn’t stop thinking about the daughter he’s supernaturally separated from for all of time.  
“Will you at least tell me why you don’t want to have any contact with Hope?” This is a much more dangerous line of questioning, but she can’t help it. She’ll get it out of one of them one day. Why not today? Why not Klaus?  
“The kind of man I am --”  
“I know the kind of man you are,” she says softly. “It’s not the kind of father you are.”  
It’s the kind of thing to say that gets a response out of Klaus. The gaping slack-jawed, pretending it doesn’t cut deep response, but he doesn’t even try to hide it now. He stands, turning on her, grabbing her by the wrists and pulling her close. She remembers that she should probably be scared of him. She hasn’t been scared of him in a long time. There are tears in his eyes. “You don’t know what kind of father I would be! And I cannot bear to find out!”  
“Klaus.” She wants to tell him a million things, a million things about Hope, about how much they both miss him.  
But she can’t. Because he’s turning over furniture and acting like the unstable lunatic he is. She should be afraid of him. She hasn’t been afraid of him in a long time. She draws her knees into her chest, and watches him get dressed, causing destruction with every step, and then finally, after he pulls on his jacket, break his phone in half as he tries to stuff it in his jacket pocket. “I love her!” he cries at last, facing Hayley. “I want to be with her! But I will ruin her! I may have already!”  
“Klaus -?”  
“She saw me -” He’s choking on his own words. “She saw who I really am.”  
Which could mean anything, but he’s gone, so she can’t ask him to explain any further. There’s a hole in the TV and the minibar is empty, and every piece of furniture that isn’t bolted to the floor has been upended, and Hayley’s rarely seen this kind of display from Klaus end in anything other than bloodshed, so it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to put together what he means. Why he won’t call, why he’s returned every letter she’s sent in the last four months. Why he’s disappeared off the face of the earth, except to follow Hayley back to Mystic Falls, just to see Hope for a second.


End file.
